From the detection of sand in fertilizers in 1872 to the detection of horse meat in lasagna in 2013 and of counterfeit pesticides in 2022, always at the forefront of analytical techniques to help farmers and consumers
Authentication present from the first steps of the CRA-W
Since creating what was the cornerstone of the future CRA-W, the research of the first director, Arthur Petermann, has focused on authentication. In the latter quarter of the 19th century, concerns in this area focused in particular on the falsifications that occurred in fertilizers, for example with the addition of sand. the microscope it was therefore an effective analytical tool for detecting this type of fraud.
Analytical methods to combat fraud and health crises
Over the years, the methods of investigation were then extended to Analytical chemistry but also al molecular biology.
So in 1967 the CRA-W organized a scientific symposium dedicated to fake detection milk fat and involved the advanced chemical techniques of the time, which was the gas chromatography.
More recently in 2013, a method PCR developed at CRA-W inside of the EURL-APinitially to authenticate processed animal proteins, it also helped monitor the horse-meat lasagna crisis.
In this same analytical framework at the service of farmers and citizens, the CRA-W is committed to detecting fraud in the active ingredients of plant protection products and other pesticides. To do this, CRA-W researchers use the mass spectrometry while the possibilities of transposition to the infrared spectrometry to speed up the detection process are being investigated in this 150th year of existence of the CRA-W.
